Susan Glaspell: A Research and Production Sourcebook

(Hardback)

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Co-founder of the Provincetown Players and one of its leading writers, Susan Glaspell won the Pulitzer Prize for Alison's House (1930) and was also successful as an actress, producer, and novelist. Her plays were compared, often favorably, with O'Neill's. After a period of eclipse, Glaspell's concern with woman's desire for selfhood brought her plays to the attention of feminist scholarship beginning in the 1970s. Mary Papke argues in this work for a reassessment of Glaspell as a major American playwright. This sourcebook begins with a bio-critical survey and includes plot summaries for each staged work, complete with production history and critical reception. An annotated bibliography of primary works includes plays, novels, short fiction, nonfiction, nonprint, and archival sources. The secondary bibliography documents reviews and provides extensive annotations for a broad range of materials. Chronologically organized, it constitutes a detailed examiniation of Glaspell criticism.

Reviews

.,."makes a strong argument throughout this exhaustive guide for a reexamination of Glaspell's significance in the American canon, both as dramatist and minor novelist. ...her detailed summations and inclusion of obscure sources should provoke further investigation. As the only research guide available on Glaspell this volume is essential... for all collections focusing on American theater history or feminist literature. Highly recommended for all academic libraries."-Choice, October 1993
...makes a strong argument throughout this exhaustive guide for a reexamination of Glaspell's significance in the American canon, both as dramatist and minor novelist. ...her detailed summations and inclusion of obscure sources should provoke further investigation. As the only research guide available on Glaspell this volume is essential... for all collections focusing on American theater history or feminist literature. Highly recommended for all academic libraries.-Choice, October 1993
Highly recommended for all academic and major public library literary reference collections.-Reference Book Review
It is hard to imagine a more complete and useful text than this one. For the specialist it offers direction; for a more general audience it provides an excellent introduction to Glaspell through the lucid summaries of a range of her works.-THJ
"Highly recommended for all academic and major public library literary reference collections."-Reference Book Review
"It is hard to imagine a more complete and useful text than this one. For the specialist it offers direction; for a more general audience it provides an excellent introduction to Glaspell through the lucid summaries of a range of her works."-THJ
..."makes a strong argument throughout this exhaustive guide for a reexamination of Glaspell's significance in the American canon, both as dramatist and minor novelist. ...her detailed summations and inclusion of obscure sources should provoke further investigation. As the only research guide available on Glaspell this volume is essential... for all collections focusing on American theater history or feminist literature. Highly recommended for all academic libraries."-Choice, October 1993

Author Bio

MARY E. PAPKE is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her areas of specialization include late nineteenth and early twentieth century literature by American women and feminist theory. She is the author of Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton (Greenwood, 1990).